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When Lucas Digital's Skywalker Sound upgraded its scoring stage from analog to digital, technicians found that higher fidelity was a double-edged sword: The system captures pesky aural interference, like stray radio frequencies and ambient machine noise.

"The dark side of digital recording is that engineers are often pushed into realms where the technology doesn't exist," says Aaron Reiff, a Skywalker engineer. "We have to invent it ourselves." Reiff devised a unique grounding system to eliminate uninvited sounds from the mix. His hack includes two NASA-grade electrolytic grounding rods and 300 feet of custom-braided copper wire, laid in a grid beneath the floor. "As soon as we finished the project and turned on the speakers," Reiff says, "it was like,wow."**